The Virginia Board of Healthhas approved tough new regulations governing the operation of abortuaries in the Old Dominion. The regulations now permit the state to closely monitor these businesses to ensure that women who seek to end the lives of their unborn children do so in a safe, sterile environment.

North Carolina’s legislature placed the fate of marriage in that state into the hands of the citizenry on September 13 when the state Senate voted 30-16 in favor of a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as only between a man and a woman. That vote came one day after the state House approved the amendment by a 75-42 margin, setting up next May’s ballot referendum, which will require a simple majority approval by voters in order to inscribe the marriage protection measure into the state’s constitution.

According to a new behavioral study, Spongebob SquarePants may cause short-term attention and learning problems in 4-year olds. The study indicates that watching a mere nine minutes of the program can have such an effect.

The Parents Television Council (PTC), a conservative watchdog group, has released a new study of network cartoons that are being viewed by kids, and, predictably, the findings are grim. In Cartoons Are No Laughing Matter, PTC used data from the Nielsen research group to identify the network cartoon shows most viewed by tweens and teens from ages 12 to 17. Based on those findings, “PTC examined 123 episodes of animated programming that aired on Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, Disney Channel and Nick at Nite for the presence of sexual content, violence, drugs and explicit language between March 21, 2011 and April 14, 2011,” the report stated. The findings were disturbing, to say the least, with nearly 1,500 documented incidents of explicit language, drug use, violence, and sexual content during the time period studied.

An appeals court has ruled in favor of a South Dakota pro-life statute requiring abortionists to inform a woman 24 hours before an abortion that she has “an existing relationship” with her unborn baby, and that the procedure will “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.”